[00:00:00.000] - Chris Nordyke
Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast? I can't tell you that reaction, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast.
[00:00:10.460] - Chris Nordyke
I'm Chris. And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours. I'm noticing that, and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose. No, I don't. I didn't, and I am not happy with it. All right. Hey, welcome back, everybody. Welcome to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast. I'm here with Nilo, Kieroz, and John Veelen. I'm really excited. They own a 1-Tom
[00:00:37.930] - Chris Nordyke
plumber and a pure-clean franchise in the Houston market. And they were recommended to us by a couple of friends, and This is our latest edition of Owners' Stories. We've got a lot of feedback from many of you listeners that you enjoy these, and I think today is going to be no exception. I think we're going to have a really fun chat with these guys. They're young enough in their heroic journey with their businesses that I think many of you that are also new to the industry will identify with a lot of their successes and struggles and their own personal stories of how they got to here.
[00:01:09.640] - Chris Nordyke
But they've also had some tremendous success right out of the gate. And those of you achievers out there, I think there's going to be some notes that you can take to learn from their experience and hopefully replicate some of their success if you're just now starting your restoration company or service company. So with that said, guys, welcome to the Head Arm Boots podcast. Why don't you guys, one of you, we're going to have to do a little back and forth here, I imagine. Give us each of your origin stories. Where did you guys come from prior to restoration?
[00:01:40.260] - Nilo Quiroz
All right. Thank you for giving us the opportunity for being in the podcast. I'm from Peru, not We're coming from Peru. We're coming from a country that the security is not the best. Our parents normally educate us in the way that we need to study a good career. We need to work in big companies. And that's how I did my initial part of my life. I'm a mechanical engineer. I I study Bachelor's Degree of Science in Peru. I enrolled one of the biggest service company in oil and gas, is Lambrace. I worked with them eight years. And after all this exposure, I realized that it wasn't for me. I don't mean anything about the oil and gas, but I meant it's not for me to be an employee. I need to be the leader. I need to be the head. I need to really do something that is meaningful for me. And that's what I would I decide to turn around. And you know what? I look at the I say, United States, how can I reach there? I need to do a master degree. Say, okay, let me go to do a master degree.
[00:02:36.700] - Nilo Quiroz
I went to study subsea engineering. Subsea engineering, we designed everything that go below underwater, everything to bring the oil and gas to the surface. And that's what I study. And then I realized, you know what? I want to open a business here. I'm in US. I want to open a business in US, and it's everything the journey start. Multiple companies, a lot of good experiences, some of them failures like you already know. You already know, right? It's not about the destination, it's about the journey. I enjoy every failure I made in my life, especially with businesses, because it prepare me for the next step. And that's what I want. Even in the big picture, this is whatever I have, Nilo.
[00:03:18.240] - Nilo Quiroz
My story, I'm from Mexico originally, and not like many people think that I just came here illegally or something. I came here by a choice or by a chance of life. I also come like John from a country where there's not a lot of opportunities. And even if you find an opportunity, it's very hard. You can make a house full of spates and then it crumbles. Because I have started a couple of businesses. I hustled when I was a kid since my 18 years old or something, and all of them failed because of corruption or things that you can actually not make something work. It takes time, takes a lot of corruption, and it's hard. So like John, my parents always told me, You know what? Stop trying to do something and just get a job. I got a job in the same company as John, a multinational, Schlumberger's, All-Ingas. And they grabbed me. Basically, this company grabbed you and sent you all around the world. I lived in nine countries. He lived in a couple as well, super weird countries. Then we met. John always wanted to do something. I also always wanted to do something.
[00:04:29.190] - John Villon
Then he told me about this idea, about doing something in US, and I said, I'm all in. But I didn't probably know what is really being an entrepreneur because it's just totally the card.
[00:04:43.000] - Nilo Quiroz
It was very weird because we have a meeting with a lot of engineers at that time in the company, and everybody always talk, right, Oh, yeah, let's do something. I'm ready. I'm ready to leave. Okay, guys, this is the moment. I'm leaving the company. We need to put money in. We're buying a company in US to start from zero. Who is in? You see how everybody fading out.
[00:05:05.360] - Chris Nordyke
Everybody fading out..
[00:05:08.600] - Nilo Quiroz
The only person who say, I don't know what's going to happen. I have no clue what is going to be the outcome. It was Nilo. I said, Let's do it.
[00:05:18.800] - John Villon
I'm going to say, for some reason, I always wanted to own a McDonald's. I love McDonald's. Since I was a kid, my parents used to take me every Friday to grab a Happy Meal in Mexico. I said, How hard can it be? We both had also the sports. We used to do sports when we were kids. When we talk about business, I said, Well, Rocky, the boxer, he used to be a boxer, and then he got us a business and he's doing good. How hard can it be? When John told me the idea, sometimes that's saying that people that don't know, they actually don't sometimes do things, and then it just works, I was that guy. I didn't know what it was getting to. I think John has a little bit more experience in that sense that his family has owned businesses before, so he know how hard it is to do a business. And he has teach me so much into what is to be a business owner, because I was with the bad conception that business owner is like, you're the boss, you're coming in 2 hours and then you walk away, and everything is running smoothly.
[00:06:19.000] - John Villon
But to get into that point, it's probably 15, 20 years in the future once you have processes and all these things, but you don't know when you don't know, right? So that's why I didn't walk I wanted that life and I wanted what's the feeling to own something. Plus, when we decided to do it, because he was the one that check all the business and give many ideas, he was really hustling that side. He present me a couple of businesses and then I said, You know what? I'm going to do it, whatever it is. But it's very hard to just say that you're going to do something and then continue with it. Peer again, was not our first business that you need to know. No. We've been working together for 15 years now, actually.
[00:06:58.840] - Nilo Quiroz
Yeah.
[00:06:59.420] - Chris Nordyke
Wow. Okay. Just a minute, guys. I've got a quick question for you because I think this is really important before we dive deeper. Business partnerships can be really messy. A lot of people listening to this have found themselves in a bad business partnership. A lot of times, that's because two people that are very, very similar come together, and then they do this. I'm curious, can you guys talk just a little bit about your relationship? Are you guys different in your natural wiring and skillset? Or are you guys similar? And just talk about how that's been, just generically, about your friendship and working relationship.
[00:07:36.100] - Nilo Quiroz
Sure. Whenever we're working at Olingas, we were like friends. We visit our families whenever we were like a cutting day off on vacation time. Whenever we become partners, of course, the expectation is high. Nilo was thinking that it was like spending 2 hours in a business and that's it. I'm out. I'm going to watch movies. I want to go to watch NBA games and everything. And then you know what? My wife was telling me, what your friend is thinking he's doing? He's spending 2 hours in the business since 05: 00 AM working in this business until 07: 00 PM. We were working there, right? He spent 2 hours. But again, this is something you cannot force people to do something. For me, the less resistant way is always make the people realize what is going to be the best choice. If I tell Nilo, Oh, you need to do this. You need to do that. No, I don't care. No, it doesn't work. You need to tell Nilo, Hey, we have a problem. We need some help in the morning. Can you come earlier? Yes. Okay, I'm in there. Hey, can you help me with the pickup in the afternoon?
[00:08:37.400] - Nilo Quiroz
It's more how you manage. And then people realize, Hey, I highly made it. I'm here at 6: 00 PM. What is it you need? What a grilled chicken. Because our first business was a catering business. We were drilling chicken, frying chips, preparing plates, forts, napkins and everything for next day orders. That was more or less a relationship. It was weird for us because We always bring our wife with us. In any type of business, we are four of us. At the beginning, as you can imagine, it was chaotic.
[00:09:10.120] - John Villon
The first two years were chaotic. Very, very difficult.
[00:09:13.260] - Nilo Quiroz
But Nilo want to go right. I want to go left. My wife want to go up.
[00:09:18.380] - John Villon
My wife down.
[00:09:19.760] - Nilo Quiroz
So this is the real situation. And that was a critical moment for the business.
[00:09:25.640] - John Villon
And on top of that, you're losing money every day.
[00:09:27.380] - Nilo Quiroz
You're losing money and your bank account is reducing. And you know what? This is going nowhere. Guys, we need to make a decision. Either we back our stuff and we leave the country, or we really need to get a direction. And that was the whole deal, right? Who's going to be the leader? Who's going to be leading the team? Who's going to be... Even my wife, give us a gestion. We need to do this. Let's introduce this menu. Let's go do some marketing. Let's create something, another type of meal for this customer that have 60 people every single day training. What do you know about food? No, I'm not doing that. How do you know? Evalidation. His wife, even Nilo, is like, Why you're saying that? How can you prove it? They were always challenging me in a way that, for example, I don't know anything. That was true. I didn't know anything. But in business, you cannot get a different outcome if you don't try something different. We need to challenge. We need to challenge the system and try one after another one. We try, we try, we try. And then we decide, we thought and say, You know what?
[00:10:32.000] - Nilo Quiroz
This is going to where we need to really follow one direction. And they chose me like the leader. Since that day, I think I haven't failed. I'm being always taking care of All of them, I try to always put my partners. It's super important, but I will say it wasn't easy. It was difficult.
[00:10:52.900] - John Villon
To answer your question, we're totally different. Black and white here. I love sales. I love talking to people. I am the one that always like meeting, doing, greeting, train, a lot of stuff. I'm the one that jumps the plane without a parachute. And John is the one that goes right behind me and say, I got you. I have the parachute here. And then throw it at me. He's that guy. I'm crazy. He's very into details and oriented and organized and structured. And I do believe that's why it make it work. Because if he was just like me, we probably will have failed. Or if everything was super structured, maybe you don't advance and try stuff. I don't know. But we're totally different people, and we have focused in totally different parts of the business. We complement each other. We talk a lot. We talk a lot. I talk to John more than I talk to my wife in a daily basis, and we probably know more about each other than we should, but we know. But this is, I think, the way to work. If you want to put it in the way I see things in life, do you remember that movie that they have like, gigantic robots and two people go in and they need to synchronize to control the robot and fight the bad guys or something like that?
[00:12:09.660] - John Villon
Pacific Grim. Pacific Grim. That is how we work. And that is how we think. And we have met each other so much at a certain level that we just control the robot, like his left arm and right arm, things like that. It's just the way we work. But in reality, when you look and meet each one of us, it's totally different opinions, to all the different views. We clash and we have a lot of discussions, but we agree in trying new stuff, and we also agree in what is in the best interest of the company, each company we have. What is the best interest in that company?
[00:12:44.220] - Nilo Quiroz
I think we reach a moment that the ego was on the side, and that's the way to move forward. Ego's on the side. Nilo, what is your idea? This one. Let's try it. Three weeks. Give results. Let's keep doing. Putting money on that. What about that idea? It doesn't matter who say it. Let's It doesn't work. Okay, put it on the side. We keep doing whatever we're getting more results right now.
[00:13:05.620] - John Villon
I think if part of your system work is because of egos. Like, Oh, I know better than you. Oh, you know better than me. You have to lower your defense on that sense and say, Hey, maybe this guy is right. The sooner you do that, the easier that Parnish is going to work. You need to understand how the other person is, why they think different and why they think this is a bad or a good idea. But also having a business partner is the best thing you can do, in my honest opinion. Look, you want to go to Christmas, you want to go to... Halloween is my thing. John is all about Christmas and family. Each person is different, and you don't let the business alone. Also, business goes up and down. When you're in that down, you're not alone there. At least somebody keeps up the spirits when the other person is down. I'm a very person that switched moods quickly, and I don't know anything else to talk to John and tell him, Hey, What we're going to do here, right? And when we're happy and great, he's always thinking about, Oh, somebody's going to come and get us, and something's going to happen.
[00:14:07.020] - John Villon
Let's better prepare. And we're always preparing, even if we're good, right? So that's how it's good to have a partnership.
[00:14:15.060] - Chris Nordyke
Are you a business that's under 5 million in sales, and you're just now getting ready to try and scale your company up and hit some of those targets you've always wanted to hit, but now you've got to build a sales team? Or maybe you just hired your first sales rep, but you don't really know how to manage them. How do you manage, lead, train, to develop a sales rep? Floodlight has a solution for you now. So we can actually assign your sales rep a turnkey VP of sales that will help them create a sales blueprint, their own personal sales plan for your market. They'll have weekly one-on-ones with that sales rep to coach, mentor them, hold them accountable to the plan. And they'll also have a monthly owners meeting where they'll meet with you or your general manager and review the progress of that sales rep, their plan to actual results, what performance improvement they're working on with them. Also, I want to let them know, Hey, you might, they're doing really well. Maybe we should think of hiring a second sales rep. They're going to have that one-to-one advice for you as an owner or senior leader on the team as well.
[00:15:08.830] - Chris Nordyke
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[00:15:41.160] - Chris Nordyke
I got a question for you guys. Let's go back. So that's really interesting. In that I think maybe most partnerships are like this, where one partner is very different than the other. It's certainly true, Brandon and I, and people that listen to podcast, they hear it just about every show. But let's go back to those first couple of years. So you buy a pure and clean franchise in in one of the most active restoration markets in the entire United States, Houston. So you're really thrown in. And what year was this? Did you guys open Puro Clean in Houston?
[00:16:10.240] - John Villon
Tell the story. Tell the story how we met Puro Clean in restoration.
[00:16:13.340] - Nilo Quiroz
So I mentioned to you that we started with the catering business. So I'm always very active, trying to always to connect with people. I think it was back on 2018, 2019, whenever I started getting phone calls from FEMA, that HiloKan Lara was supposed to hit in Louisiana, and they want us to provide 500 meals. I told them, Which day, what time in three hours? Five hundred meals. I say, That's my entrepreneur inside me. I call the cook, Guys, you need to come now to the kitchen. What are we preparing? I don't know. Let me check the cooler. Let me check the freezer, what we have. We're shipping this thing out. We couldn't make it in three hours. We make it in four hours. We deliver 500 meals to one company, large loss company. It was a restoration company. It was providing food. And then I said, there is an opportunity here. We put the Google Ads, we start going around, we get the gold and black company, the green company, the yellow company, the orange company, everybody ordering food from us. I was delivering 2,000 meals per day, so $20 each. So sometimes breakfast, sometimes lunch and dinner.
[00:17:22.280] - John Villon
It was crazy. And they were paying credit card in advance. Credit card in advance. And John said, Are you guys doing something legal? I mean, this is a lot of money. What the hell is going on here? I want to get into this business.
[00:17:32.640] - Nilo Quiroz
We have food and beverage. Normally, you make 7%, you manage to make 11 % net profit. You're a king. You're amazing. So I say, How come you can pay your guys a very expensive meal and charging you a lot of delivery fee, and you're still paying and you're still making money? Oh, yeah. I have a partner coming from California. I have another partner coming from Oregon. I have another partner from New York. It's like, wow, which business is this?
[00:17:56.030] - John Villon
No, and then you go and see what they're doing. Yeah, exactly. Which business is this? And there's a more than he's like, what's going on?
[00:18:01.780] - Nilo Quiroz
It is a restoration. So for the first 10 days of delivery, because we stayed three weeks there, by the way, I went and I started analyzing what's going on. They're going to say, tell me what you do. Come to this house. I want to show you. So I entered the house and the guys, you are destroying the house. No, we're restoring the house. I see you're rigging stuff. I don't see you're putting everything back. Yeah, there is a process. What is this company about? How much money can you make in this company? The bottom line is going to be very, very high compared to other industries. That's what's my first approach to restoration.
[00:18:36.480] - John Villon
That's how John met restoration. We were in the food and beverage business. Quick break over there. We did try to do food and beverage in Singapore. We opened a company in Singapore. It was a startup, Middleman, classic website, Middleman for food and beverage. John and me, we moved to Singapore. We were there for a year and something, almost two years. It was profitable. It was great. We learned a lot about technology, how to do apps, the whole enchilada.
[00:19:02.500] - Nilo Quiroz
But we were in an incubator, no?
[00:19:04.640] - John Villon
We were in an incubator by the government. We got funds. We learned how to raise money. We learned a lot of stuff. How to pitch, prepare the day, everything. How to talk, how to get big companies with us. And COVID hit. And when COVID hit, we basically killed the company over there. I mean, everywhere, food and beverage was lost everywhere. So we came back to the US, reunite, and then we said, what we're going to do next? And me and John, we always have this dream about doing construction and working. Well, he wanted to do projects, engineering and designing and all these things. And I wanted to do roads. For some reason, I like roads. I want to do roads. I think it's just a good business. And we said, let's do a construction company. But we like franchise systems, and we can talk about that later. But we love franchises. So let's say, let's find the best franchise in restoration. I mean, in construction, there's not. It doesn't exist. All right? So if anybody is looking for a good idea, that's a good idea. That's a good idea. So there's no franchising in construction.
[00:19:58.560] - John Villon
And then he came up all this story and told me about restoration. And I said, you know what? That sounds like something interesting. And we did research for six months about restoration and everything. And we are getting them. At this point, we're very good at making business plans and understanding if it's a good business or not. Took us six months, all four of us involved in checking what's going on.
[00:20:19.490] - Nilo Quiroz
We have different options.
[00:20:20.840] - John Villon
We have four options. We basically contact four franchises, and we make it through all of the procedures of everyone. Not pure, by the way. And we were almost going to get one. But they just told us... We did all the interviews. We were just about to deposit the money for a franchise fee. And then they told us, You know what, guys? Houston market is taking completely. You cannot get in. And we're like, What are you talking about? We were in the process. We were good.
[00:20:44.280] - Nilo Quiroz
It was free at the beginning, and then they told us it's not available anymore. Okay, can you make an official document for me to have it, please?
[00:20:51.960] - John Villon
And they didn't do it. And we talked to the broker, and we asked the broker, sincerely, Hey, look, we want to get a restoration company. And we have all these, but nothing convinced us the one that we just lost. So do you recommend any company at all that is restoration and that is good? And the broker said, You know what? We just got this franchise that used to be okay, but now they're doing... They're making waves and they're just going on a growth. They're going great. They just got acquired and it's a brand new leadership and everything. And it's called Puiracl. And then just said, You know what? Let's talk to them.
[00:21:18.190] - Nilo Quiroz
Let's talk to them. Yeah.
[00:21:19.400] - John Villon
And that's how we got into Peerically.
[00:21:21.100] - Nilo Quiroz
That's how we joined Peerically. We started with a story in 2021.
[00:21:24.920] - John Villon
In 2021, we started, yes.
[00:21:26.650] - Chris Nordyke
Wow. Okay, guys, let's just recap a little bit what's happened here I guess. So you really got turned on originally to the industry where when you own the catering company, you're serving hundreds and thousands of meals a day at a really nice margin. You guys are making money. But then you start talking to some of these restorers, and you're like, holy cow, we think the money is good here. These guys are making big money doing this restoration thing. And so that's where it originally piqued your interest. But then you guys go off and there's a whole other interlude where you guys to Singapore after that company, and you start some food and beverage, technology, whatever thing. That goes pretty good until COVID. And then you guys come back around and start Puroclin. Okay, now I have to ask you this. Okay, I want to go back to the chaos that you guys mentioned in your first couple of years.
[00:22:16.840] - John Villon
In the catering company.
[00:22:18.580] - Chris Nordyke
Oh, that was the catering company. Okay, well, let's talk about the first year.
[00:22:21.600] - John Villon
Here in the catering company, by Pure Clean, we work together very good as a more season. We were season as a partnership.
[00:22:29.210] - Chris Nordyke
Okay. Well, let's talk about that first year, guys. What? 2021. In Pure Clean? Yeah, when you got in-All right.
[00:22:37.160] - John Villon
I mean, there's chaos. I'll tell you. Okay. Okay.
[00:22:39.720] - Chris Nordyke
All right. What was the first thing that you guys encountered?
[00:22:42.180] - John Villon
So by this point, we got the franchise and everything. You go through the training. But even before going to the training, we learned in Singapore, when we got accepted to Singapore and all these things, even without being in Singapore, we start calling people because you can do market research even if you're not there, or in this case for restoration. So we learned that with the startup. So before when we got accepted into pure clean and we got accepted in the restoration, John told me, Nilo, you know agents? Well, I maybe know a couple of insurance agents. And he said, they say agents is the thing. Why don't you start calling some agents? And by the way, this is my agent. This is my agent. He knows some people. And I start hitting the ground and talk to people without even knowing what am I going to sell or talk to them about. But I just go. That's me. So I just go.
[00:23:25.070] - Nilo Quiroz
We didn't even have a company.
[00:23:26.390] - John Villon
We didn't even have a company. But I'm talking because we want to understand the market. So I go and hit the ground. Then we went to... And they start explaining me how it works, restoration. Then we went to training and then we come back. And then we keep doing the sales in the exterior, try to get orders. We don't have anything. It's just like that. And a hero can hit Louisiana. Aida. Aida. You have a couple of hundred thousands in the bank. That's what we have savings for the whole year. And then John tell me. Because at this point, I'm out in the streets all the time, and he's just managing the whole operation. And he tells me, Nilo, there's this opportunity, here I can hit. We don't know anything about the game, but we can go to hurricane, and they say, that's how you can make some cash. We have a couple of hundreds. We can probably support the operation and learn. But the most important thing for us, it was not making money. To be honest, he told me, we need to learn how to do this. That's the best scenario because you can actually learn and we might have jobs.
[00:24:19.660] - John Villon
John is always a very realistic person. Like I told you, he doesn't play and go crazy. He told me, if we go there and do three houses, we're good. We can at least don't lose money. We make a couple, come back, and we learn how to do houses.
[00:24:31.700] - Nilo Quiroz
We want to go for the experience exposure, right? We want to make sure what are we getting into, what is going to be a cut. So we have one week after we finalize our training, our store wasn't even open.
[00:24:45.700] - John Villon
We were printing walls and stuff.
[00:24:47.150] - Nilo Quiroz
And we were heading Louisiana already.
[00:24:48.970] - John Villon
But John told me also, if we fail, we might lose the business because we don't have more money. We don't have more money to sustain the business. So I told him, okay, I don't know, let's try it, right? But I think I know what he was doing. Yeah. We went there. Okay, we didn't even open shop. We took... They send you stuff, right? They send you equipment, they send you everything. Just in the package, we put in a truck and get the hell out. We didn't even open equipment. We didn't open shop. We just went.
[00:25:15.000] - Nilo Quiroz
By the way, when they receive a lot of the items, we were not sure what was this equipment for.
[00:25:20.740] - Chris Nordyke
How are you even going to use it?
[00:25:22.560] - John Villon
I'm not going to lie.
[00:25:24.220] - Nilo Quiroz
I brought carpet cleaners, instruction machine. We don't need. I bought a lot chemicals for all the authorisation.
[00:25:32.020] - John Villon
I made everything for fire, for biohacer.
[00:25:35.120] - Nilo Quiroz
You can go to a training, but you're not an expert, right? Yeah. But guess what? He's going to have everything there and choose what you have that don't have it, right? So that's whatever we need.
[00:25:45.480] - John Villon
We end up-No, before we ended up. Okay, yeah, you can say how much we did. Okay.
[00:25:49.780] - Nilo Quiroz
We did end up doing 49 houses. We brought the revenue around $490,000, almost half million dollars on our... I think the month prior our opening. And we were already invoicing and the corporate office is like, Guys, are you coming back to Houston? You need to open your store.
[00:26:08.900] - John Villon
Yeah, they tell us to open the store. Sure. But we didn't do it wrong or anything. On that say, I don't want to be sound cocky or anything. At the bottom line, we're engineers, right? Once you do it once or twice, you get it. You get it. And we were also not stupid in a way. When we go to deployments, there's not only one pure clean. There's like 20, 30 pure cleans over there. We talked to another pierroquing. We talked to a regional director and they told us, Hey, you can partner up with these guys and they'll teach you the ropes and everything. The first house, we basically did it for free. We just went with another pierroquing and, Okay, explain us how does it work? Then he explained us the whole theory behind it and how do you do this. To learn. So we talk to the Peerableen Network helped each other.
[00:26:48.310] - Nilo Quiroz
We made a deal that he was not about to refuse. Give me two houses. I have 10 people with me. Let's go and give it to people for two days for free.
[00:26:58.480] - John Villon
For free. We do labor for free.
[00:27:00.050] - Nilo Quiroz
Labor for free. You just need to teach them and teach me how to do it. That's it. That's what we went, two houses, and then we finish. I said, Thank you so much. We're on our own. And then I signed my first house. I think it was complete God. You need to demo all the entire house. You have a perforation on the... But multiple perforations on the roof. And then I called Nilo, the homeowner left, gave me the key. I called Nilo. I said, Nilo, I got my first house.
[00:27:25.720] - John Villon
I couldn't believe it.
[00:27:26.580] - Nilo Quiroz
Nilo is like, Are you sure? Yeah, I have the key. I'm inside. Homeowner is not here. I need to call Darren. Bring everybody. Our instructor from. I don't know what to do, right?
[00:27:36.840] - John Villon
And we were literally with the iPhone doing FaceTime and everything, doing the readings. And he was like, That's gone. That's gone. And John is like, Are you sure? Are you sure we're not going to pay for this? Can I take it down? And he's like, It's gone. Look at this. You know what I'm explaining? And John is like, Okay. Okay, let's do it. The whole house, we went down. It was a major hurricane. But by the way, in this struggle over here, you need to understand. Even before we got the deal with the hurricane and when we arrived, because we were very early into the hurricane, me and John were out knocking doors, trying to get jobs for three days. And we entered a house. We spent four or five hours with a homeowner trying to do a sketch. Everything basically as per the book in the school, and it was just not working out. And the customer was like, I'm not going to sign. Let me think about it. And we were losing customers left and right. And we also were doing horrible sketches and everything. We were so lost. And then when this guy came in, they actually show us a lot of tools, sketching tool, how to document, and how to do it the proper way.
[00:28:38.280] - John Villon
That was the reality.
[00:28:40.080] - Nilo Quiroz
So we learned a lot.
[00:28:41.020] - John Villon
The Pure Clean Network helped us a lot.
[00:28:43.240] - Chris Nordyke
Okay, so let's move forward a little bit to, all right, you get through the hurricane. You clearly, awesome first showing, right? Half million bucks. You've got 50 homes, projects under your belt, right? So you've learned a lot. I love your comment about you guys are engineers, right? So you're watching. You do those first couple. You're paying attention. Then you start doing your own. You still feel a little bit lost, but you've got resources through the franchise that are helping you hold your hand a little bit on the next several, I imagine. Correct. And then you guys start to get a system in place. But you're in a hurricane zone, very different than local mitigation operations. So you guys get home and you finally open up your store in Houston. Talk to me about your first year or two establishing that local operations. What would What would you guys say was your biggest challenge or learning experience when you started building the local operations?
[00:29:35.880] - John Villon
So that's why it's important that I told you that even when we didn't open shop, we were not even in the training and everything, I was visiting agents. I know it will sound crazy, but when I came back, those agents start calling me, Hey, are you back from the hurricane? I have this lady in this house that's asking me about some others and whatever. I'm like, Sure, let's take a look. And they start ringing that phone, and that got us traction, and we start getting jobs. I couldn't believe it. Those three months that I stay out and try to knock down people or month or something that I don't know how many time from, to be honest, but we did some sales, if you want to say. When we came back, immediately we start getting orders here. So for us, it was not really like a lot of waiting and sitting around on the phone or whatever, because the minute we came down, I was back in the streets hustling. We struggled with bigger things, more like operational stuff. But in the sales side, we were okay. By the way, now, again, I was learning the ropes of selling.
[00:30:33.800] - John Villon
One of our biggest contributors to Curiclin is one of our agents or best agents. I met him before, then I met him after a hurricane, and he told me, Hey, look, I like you. You seem nice, but You don't know what to do. You don't really know.
[00:30:46.840] - Nilo Quiroz
You don't know nothing about restaurant.
[00:30:49.220] - John Villon
Yeah. And the guy sit me down for 2 hours and explain me how to sell him and any other agent. And after, there's an after and before this conversation.
[00:30:58.500] - Chris Nordyke
Tell me what he said. Tell me what he said in that conversation.
[00:31:00.490] - John Villon
He said, You need to join a networking group. You need to make your brand recognized. You need to talk professionally. You need to go and do inspections for free. You need to... He tells me a lot of stuff that we actually have to do. You don't need to come here and just give me cookies or candy or drop me stuff. I will never talk to you. Who are you? Let's make a relationship here. So he starts explaining me how to get into an agent. And he tells me, I don't want you coming in, walking in, and just talking to my people. They're busy men. And a lot of stuff. And he tells me, this is how I want you to work with me, and then we will work together. And that agent basically helped me build a bigger network. And he told me, I know this guy, and this guy, and this guy. Go visit them. Tell them that you come on my behalf, and then you start getting jobs, and that's it. And another thing, you know it happens all the time, mom and pups or things like that, they go up and here again, then they go down.
[00:31:53.110] - John Villon
Or also what happens is big companies, and that's what we have never done. Big companies get big commercial jobs and they start stopped servicing residential. That was the case of this agent. He used to be partnered with a big brand, and as soon as they start getting commercial, they stop serving him. So he needed that help. He's a residential agent. So he told me, If you're going to do good, I'll give you business. And he present me a lot of people.
[00:32:17.600] - Nilo Quiroz
I will talk in the operation part a little bit on the beginning of Peter Clean. We have a big challenges. We have a lot of contacts, a lot of people coming to the store with busy team, but no claims. We have no production. We were sitting there. I think one of the secrets is to never say no. We have a order removal. Okay, I will do it. Hang up. Get the information of the customer. The first thing I do, I call my instructor. What should I do here? I don't have that certification for other. Tell me everything you know about other. Call this guy. He does this thing every month. Okay. He give me all this intensive training over the phone. I go inspect with the customer. I tell him, Give me a couple of days. I will be coming. We do it.
[00:33:00.520] - John Villon
Then he takes a flight and go get this certification and come back just like that.
[00:33:04.000] - Nilo Quiroz
It was crazy. Never say no. We never say no to any type of services. We never say, for example, people are starting restoration. They always are afraid to do reconstruction. They say no content. Oh, yeah, slowly, slowly. Since day number one, we start with a 10,000 square feet location and it was empty. Chris, empty. I have to see this location empty every single day. I was not happy. I was always concerned to make this location to be full of content, full of furniture. And that's the secret, I guess, of our early success was diversification. We do all the services since the beginning. We never say no. We have a Fentanyl, I think-1-Tom, but that was later after, two years. Yeah, but Fentanyl, and guess what? I wasn't certified to do Fentanyl, but I called a from the network that is in Dallas, Fort Ward. He came with his crew. We team up. They did the training for me. We did the job, period. That's the bless of being in a network, right? You have the instructor, you have the owners that they have a ton of experience. Those people, they have 15, 20 years in business.
[00:34:13.800] - Nilo Quiroz
Right now, we are four. At the time, we were like one, not even one. But that is the benefit to be part of the network. But I would say diversification, I'm not saying no.
[00:34:24.170] - Chris Nordyke
I'm not saying no. I'm hearing a theme, guys, and I imagine it made you ultimately the sweetheart of the PuroClean corporate office because these resources are available. And of course, that's part of the design of franchise companies is to be able to provide that support early on so you don't have to figure it out yourself. And you guys actually leveraged that knowledge and experience as you encountered challenges. I think it's a really good thing for our listeners to hear, right? Because Brandon and I, we've worked with many, many, many, many franchises, as have our other consultants and partners. And often people aren't leveraging those resources. They're not calling on individual jobs. How do I do this? And getting paired up with a subject matter expert. And so I think that's a great message to folks. You know what, Chris?
[00:35:11.020] - Nilo Quiroz
What is the main reason they don't call? Because of the ego. They don't want to check with anybody in the headquarters because of the ego. People don't want to look that they're asking about something maybe silly or maybe obvious. And guess what? Since day number one, our ego, I think our ego is stopped in the catering business. I When I came to pure clean. You know what? I don't know this. What should I do? You ask. Our instructor was telling me, John, stop texting me. Stop calling me. It is Sunday, 11: 00 PM. What do you want? I have another job. I have another inspection at 11: 00 10: 00 PM, I'm doing inspection in Louisiana. A customer couldn't make it before. I was doing an inspection. John, please. I will talk to you tomorrow. Thank you. Bye. But at that level, we put our ego behind and we just say, Listen, I know this thing. I don't know this is more advanced. Please guide me through. And we're listeners. We listen. We try to capitalize on their own experience, and we try to apply it in our market. That's what we did.
[00:36:11.720] - Chris Nordyke
That's good. Where are your wives in this? How involved are your wives in the pure clean business?
[00:36:16.630] - John Villon
A lot, actually. A lot. We are four, basically, and we split in sales. I'll do sales, mainly. John do ops financing strategy, and Nadine, which is John's wife, do accounting and-Office management. And office management. And Carol do marketing. That's it. And HR a little bit. And that's what we distribute different tasks in each one place. Now, have we ever done it like this? No, I mean, we were switching and stuff until we find what are we good at? Now that we keep growing in businesses, we want to change and do other stuff. We want to try other realms and trying to improve skills because it's always good to learn new stuff. That's another thing we like. Yeah.
[00:36:59.200] - Chris Nordyke
With you guys working so closely with one another, have you ever had conflict in the pure and clean business between the four of you or two of you? How have you guys navigated that? How have you chosen to deal with those situations?
[00:37:12.040] - Nilo Quiroz
I think we learned to face those challenges in the catering. To don't go very extreme, but it is extreme. Me and Nilo, in different time, we were very close to a divorce situation, a separation. But I thank my wife to support me 100 %. I thank at all for supporting Nilo. Because we will not be able to do anything without them. They are taking care of the house, they're taking care of our kids, and that's super important.
[00:37:38.520] - John Villon
And the other stuff, how we look, trips, all the other stuff. We are fully immersed working and trying to build a brand in Houston that we need that support in the back. If they were not there, our life would be a mess.
[00:37:52.340] - Nilo Quiroz
Another part I want to mention, I think I forgot to mention, it is a lot of people, whenever we were starting in pure clean and we're getting some quick results, they were like, What is your secret? There's no secret. It's like, put the hours. I start my day at 6: 00, 7: 00 AM. 5: 00 because you do 5: 00.
[00:38:07.650] - John Villon
Yes.
[00:38:09.040] - Nilo Quiroz
So 5: 00 AM, but in the office at 7: 00. And then I leave here around 9: 00 PM I reach my house 10: 00 PM. That was the first two years, right? And then it's like, wow, you work a lot. Yeah, think about it. If I take six hours per day difference from what you work right now, I was talking to another peer-to-peer owner. Multiplied that in a year, two years. That's why, and plus I have a partner doing the same. That's why sometimes we advance quick because we're moving faster. So that idea that, Oh, I'm a business owner, I will work less, that is not going to happen. It doesn't go with us. It doesn't go with us neither. We know we need to grind. We need to really hustle to really get results. I think that was a secret that we knew since day number one what needs to be done. Marketing, check. Google Ads, check. Training, check. Equipment, check.
[00:38:58.350] - John Villon
Capital, working capital. Going outside and work.
[00:39:00.250] - Nilo Quiroz
Check. Now we have contacts. We're missing some components. Hey, can you clean rocks? I clean rocks. Yeah. We have a friend that have a problem with the dog. They stay in the house and do all these things around for a week. We can take care of that. Sometimes we didn't even know how to estimate. Oh, yeah, that was a big one. I'm not kidding. We used to say, okay, it's a $2,000 job. My labor was $3,000. But guess what? I learned. I ask, Hey, my labor was $3,000. How much How should I have charged? Five times this, four times the labor cost. I was learning. But I'm not afraid to invest my money. I don't say it lucid. I'm investing my money for knowledge. And that's the point. We take it with a lot of pride. We do what we do because we fail a lot. And guess what?
[00:39:48.550] - John Villon
Sometimes because we won. He has this saying about, I don't know, let's say we do a biohazard and not make money. And he said, okay, so learning biohazard cost us X money. Now we know. But it's the cost We're not learning, right? But we have to. There's one thing that maybe you, a lot of people say, even in a different way, John and me, we have skills in sales, probably. And that's why also we have that hustling. We really want We go after, we're going to stop, we keep going and going and going. Good times, bad times, economy up, down, sideways. We don't believe any of that. There's work out there. Somebody is doing it. Why? We are not the ones doing it. And that's our mentality.
[00:40:29.480] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah. Don't get too caught up in the successes. Just keep moving. Set before failures. Just keep moving forward.
[00:40:35.320] - Nilo Quiroz
And we see the big restoration companies, they have a different structure. Am I might want to be one of them or not? Maybe not. I want to be our own version. That's what I want. Our own version of a restoration company. We want to grow and to the size that we're comfortable. That's what we want.
[00:40:53.300] - John Villon
We don't work anymore in those first two years, like we told you, 7 AM to 9 PM. We don't do that. That was because we needed to get the business at some point, right? Yeah, right. At this point, we have a couple of employees. How many employees we have right now? Sixty-one. And of course, totally different business, right? I don't say I'm going out at two. Actually, it never happens. But we cut it at five or six, right? And we can take a vacation. We can take days off. But at the beginning, that didn't exist. But now we're in a different place. But it was a choice. It was our choice.
[00:41:23.780] - Nilo Quiroz
It was our choice.
[00:41:24.600] - John Villon
You can do it, but you're not advancing that quick. That's correct.
[00:41:27.910] - Nilo Quiroz
Yeah.
[00:41:28.520] - Chris Nordyke
Question, when did you guys explore the plumbing and the one Tom, plumber.
[00:41:33.380] - John Villon
This is interesting. It's always John, right? I mean, as long as I told you that I go out in the plane without the parachute, but still, I have learned to be cautious, maybe from him. So we were in a Convention. That's another thing. I'm just a tip. You need to go to conventions, everything. All these conventions that exist in restoration, you meet people. There was one guy approach a girl, actually, approach me and told me, We just got into this new business that goes great with restoration. It's a plumbing business. Immediately, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, Rocky. Immediately, I was like, Plumber? No way. Never. A plumber? That's the bottom of the construction line. No, bottom feeders. I'm not interested. Thank you very much. It doesn't matter what it is. I just don't care. And John, a same lady approached John.
[00:42:18.940] - Nilo Quiroz
No, I approach because I saw the lady talking to Nilo and say, What were you guys talking about? Nilo doesn't like the idea of the plumbing. And said, Tell me more about it. I want to hear. Tell me more. Who is enrolled? Who already franchised? How is the franchise? Who is the ownership? Getting more information, more over and over.
[00:42:36.240] - John Villon
How does it help the restoration you ask?
[00:42:37.840] - Nilo Quiroz
That's correct, right? So that's the key, right? We try to always, after year number three, try to get more into the commercial side. We were thinking about a people or use the plumbing, leverage some jobs for us. Actually, that works. I have to tell you, after being a year in the plumbing, we are referring pure clean maybe between, I would say An average of one and a half jobs per week. So that's a six-word jobs for a pure clean per month. I mean, that can be a $10,000 or $20,000 jobs. So think about the incremental of $100,000 per month, $2. 2 million per year just owning that brand. And that is growing, is growing. As long as you do more services in the plumbing, that will grow and grow more. So the concept works. And the team, you can talk about the team. But for me, just to make it short, great leadership, great operations. Everything is us need to be done with the checklist. It's easier to manage. It's easy to get money in your bank account. So I would say, thumbs up for 1-Tom. Yeah.
[00:43:45.840] - John Villon
So we've noticed about it. They told us, and then we talked, John and me, and enough in the hotel, and we were talking about this. And you told me, let's give it a try. Let's talk to them. That's the other thing that I like. And just like oil and gas, we didn't told you, but it takes forever to get into a big company in oil and gas, or it used to. I don't know how it is anymore. And to get into the plumbing, it's very complicated. It's not that easy. It's not as easy as an air restoration. They have a very hard, strict procedure to get in. And it's three or four interviews, and a lot of people dropped. So we got into the first or second phase. Then you have to go visit them. I couldn't because I have small kids and some of them have a flu or something. I couldn't go. John went. They liked him. And then they say, Hey, but we cannot say yet until we know your partner. And when I went there, I went punching and kicking. I didn't want it. I'm going to tell you, I didn't want it.
[00:44:35.420] - John Villon
I said, no, no, no. So I went with a bad attitude and I went hard. I went with all the facts and asking hard questions like, how are you going to do this? What's this? What's that? Why? And a lot of questions. And they answer every single one of them. And by the end of that session, I said, Nilo, now I wanted to get into the business. And I said, Nilo, you better start flipping the script here and make these guys like you. Otherwise, you're out. And this is a great opportunity And I was like, damn. So I mean, I flipped the script and we started mingling in a very mood and I was not that negative about it. And then we got in and it's been a crazy ride. But just like John said, we use it a lot for leverage into getting into commercial. Houston is a super crowded market. We have one of the biggest brands here, Born and Raised Hustonian, and he's getting a lot of contracts in commercial. So it's very hard for us to penetrate that market. So the way we are doing it is a starting with the plumbing, getting the people to know us, loving the service.
[00:45:33.700] - John Villon
Now they are in love with the plumbing, and then they say, Hey, we can do restoration, too. You guys? No. We have a sister company, and they can do the job. And then we start getting in those jobs, slowly slowly, slowly. Nothing happens quicker. And then that's it. Regardless the fact, leadership in Wantum is very great. They have super structure. They really grab you along the hand. We're doing probably closer to 200K per month. Stadium Plum in a year after a year. We just got a year this month or something. It's just good. It's good business.
[00:46:07.750] - Chris Nordyke
That's great. You guys, back in 2023, it's worth mentioning International Franchising Association awarded you guys Franchise of the year. Can I read that correctly? Yes.
[00:46:17.520] - Nilo Quiroz
We have at the early time, I think we did Rookey of the Year. We did a biggest record. Until now, nobody can break it. It was, I think, $2. 1 million in the first 12 months. That's what we did. Then we did President Circle the first a year or two. And since then, we didn't stop. In 2023, we do International Franchise Association. We do the franchise of the year. We also got awarded like a restoration company. You have different categories. And since then, it's been a journey. The journey is amazing. I love it. I have passion about it. I like what I'm doing. I'm learning and keep learning. Believe it or not, I keep failing. And I like it because that's the only way to improve. That's the only way to improve. We keep failing. We're changing. I don't know, you I'm not going to say it, but we are doing right now, we have a development company we create, and we are 70% in construction of our first project. It's a two-houses project, and we already have project number two funded and project number three is we're about to buy the land. We have a strategic partnership with certain people.
[00:47:22.300] - Nilo Quiroz
We are trying to grow our companies a little bit to diversify. If one industry go down for some reason, the other one will start going up or stabilize. So we like to put our eggs in different baskets, and that's how I prefer to do it. But I like the journey. It doesn't matter. The concepts apply to every single industry, from food to to restoration, to plumbing, to development. So I think we're getting better slowly, slowly. Development is easy, way easy. Other companies, you can make money faster, I guess. It's just a journey. I'm enjoying what I'm doing.
[00:48:00.400] - John Villon
I want to add up there just saying that, yeah, it's hard, but if you start living and breathing and like what you're doing, then probably you're in the right track.
[00:48:08.900] - Chris Nordyke
Listen, guys, I think we've reached a good wrap-up moment here. It's been so much good stuff. You guys are clearly serial entrepreneurs. You're not limited to the restoration space. You've got your eyes on a lot of different business opportunities and things of that sort. So I think that'll resonate with a lot of our listeners. So many great takeaways. I think as I listen to you two, the things that stand out to me is that you guys were really intentional. You've been really intentional throughout your working relationship together to be conscious of and to set aside your ego, to not allow your egos and your pride to get in the way of you guys learning and growing together and making the business work. And of course, that's the downfall for a lot of us. It's like our egos often are the thing that gets in the way. The other thing I heard you say is that you have embraced failure as a mechanism for learning. I think a lot of us can sometimes hyper fixate on not failing and not screwing up, and ultimately also miss the lesson when things do break down. And it sounds like that's a real part of your guys's culture is embracing failure and learning from it.
[00:49:15.940] - Chris Nordyke
I also think, too, a takeaway I'm having is it's pretty clear to me you guys like each other. You guys enjoy working together. That's not lost on me. I think that's an important thing. It's an important contributor to success. If you don't like working with each other, you're not going to enjoy showing up to work. If you don't enjoy the thing you're doing in front of you, certainly a lot of it's hard. There's a lot of suffering. But if there aren't this ray of light every day, a fun interaction with one another, joking and laughing together periodically, if you don't have at least that, it's really hard to achieve this success that you guys have. I'm going to give you guys each one opportunity to close this out. We have a lot of business owners listening to our podcast. As a couple of dudes that you've been very successful and you've had a lot of failures along the way, and now you're what? Let's see, you're roughly four years into your restoration and now one Tom Plumber journey. What's one piece of advice that each of you would give to our audience?
[00:50:17.920] - John Villon
I'm sorry, I'm going to steal this one from you. John told me a long time ago, I keep this top of my head, to be honest. I'm a speedy person. Everybody wants to... I want to do everything quick, quick, quick. Let's go, let's go, let's go. No stop, no stop, no stop. I'm that person. Sometimes for me, failure was like, Oh, my God, oh, my God. Emergency situation or everything is burning down. I didn't see this as an obstacle. I just saw it like, that's it, it's done. When I go down the pit, it's killing me. He told me, Nilo, you know what? Business in life is not a race. It's not a 100-metre race. Like a sprint. Like a sprint. And you give everything the first day and that's it. And you're done. No, it's a marathon. And you have to prepare and it takes time. And you will do it once, and when you finish, you will feel like, oh, my God, this was amazing. And you have a lot of things in between. They say 20 kilometers in and you're like, Oh, my God, I want to die. And then in 30, you're like, I'm the greatest thing in in my life.
[00:51:15.620] - John Villon
I think John has never run, but he knows about marathons for some reason. He told me, That's the way you need to see business. For any owner that they're struggling right now, this has been one of the hardest years in the industry. I'm going to tell you, This year cannot or any situation cannot say that you're doing good or bad. Please remember, this is not a sprint, it's a marathon.
[00:51:37.360] - Nilo Quiroz
That's good.
[00:51:38.430] - John Villon
That's it.
[00:51:40.280] - Chris Nordyke
From what side, I will say, everybody, we tend to listen a lot to other people.
[00:51:47.560] - Nilo Quiroz
It happened to us in the early stage, Hey, don't do reconstruction. You don't make money out of it. You don't do contents because you will lose money. Guess what? That would save my business many multiple times. Whenever they water two, three months, there's no orders. I was doing, I would say, $100,000, $200,000 on content and reconstruction per month. That's what kept my business floating. Be careful. Listen to people. Gather the information. Analyze it. Seek how you can apply it in your market. Try and assess the results. If it works for you, your king is the best. Apply it, use it. If it doesn't work for you, park it on the side, go with the next idea. Never Never stop innovating. Never stop trying. There's something I want to say very short. In year 2015, we were about to close our catering company. Four of us, we were sitting discussing who's going to be the leader and everything. And we have a visitor, the customer, the person come and say, what are you guys talking about? We're talking right now. We're talking about this, about the company future and everything. What's your problem? What's your trouble?
[00:52:52.760] - Nilo Quiroz
We don't have too many sales. Okay, go to the medical center with a bag of cookies and a couple of menus, and just go and spread around, and you will get results immediately. Medical center was seven minutes away. Milo was laughing. Carol was laughing. My wife was laughing. Everybody started laughing. I was serious. I'm mute. I'm like, That's what I will do. Let's just stand up. Let's get 200 cookies, 200 menus. Tomorrow, we're hitting the streets, even for the least expected person. We hit the street. That week, we double sales. The week after, we double again. The week after, and we never stopped. You didn't stop. Never stopped. We We are creating our future. We are controlling our future.
[00:53:34.860] - John Villon
The advice can come from people unexpected, to be honest. Guys... That's different.
[00:53:42.100] - Chris Nordyke
It's pretty clear some of the key things that have made you guys successful, and I think will help ensure your guys' continued success. Thank you so much, guys, for telling us. Thank you for having us.
[00:53:51.240] - John Villon
Thank you for having us, to be honest. It was our pleasure.
[00:53:52.940] - Chris Nordyke
Yeah, this is awesome, guys. Well, thank you again. And best of luck as you guys finish out 2025. I'm sure this won't be the the last time we talk. But thanks for coming on the show. Please take care.
[00:54:02.860] - John Villon
Have a good one.
[00:54:04.500] - Chris Nordyke
All right. Have a good day. Bye-bye. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots.
[00:54:13.260] - Chris Nordyke
And if you're enjoying the show, if you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.